Shagreen

I'm starting to really love anything shagreen {the textury hide of a shark or sting ray}. Originally, the skin of a shark or sting-ray was used to give furniture a shagreen appearance, but today, more and more furniture makers are using embossed leather and vinyl fabricated to look like sting-ray skin. New shagreen home furnishings keep popping up everywhere I look. Mecox Gardens and Julian Chichester have an abundance of it. Check out these fabulous finds...
















For high-end and authentic shagreen, search "shagreen" as the keyword in 1stdibs here.

Custom Benches

Today I was finally able to deliver 2 custom benches that I had made for my clients' entry in Newport Beach. We had to have the iron base fabricated, then custom painted with a silvery/taupe/slightly antiqued finish, then we had my upholsterer biscuit tuft the top leather. I threw some throw pillows on top and a rug beneath and created a little photo shoot. I love the color of leather that we finally decided on. You can't really tell from the photos, but it has a slight metallic look to it.






















Another recent addition to the same house was a couple of picture shelves on the piano wall in the living room. My clients had a bunch of cool photographs from San Francisco, so I framed them and had our wood worker build two thin picture shelves to set them on. Here was my inspiration photograph:



The room still isn't quite finished, but here are the finished shelves with artwork. (Please excuse the horrible lighting, clearly I don't have this photography thing down quite yet.)



Their house is really coming along, I can't wait to finish up with lighting and accessories and then share the finished project.

HD Buttercup

I drove up to HD Buttercup in Culver City today to pick up some rugs for a client. I love that store. They have some really interesting furnishings and often at a good discount. For designers, it may pale in comparison to the Pacific Design Center, but personally I think it's sometimes nice to visit a more condensed furniture mall that doesn't take as long to walk through and has significantly closer (and cheaper) parking.





Even though it's a little bit of a drive from Orange County, I always try to send clients there who are interested in doing some shopping on their own. It's not "to the trade only", like most design centers, but it still helps clients see what new and different furniture is available, outside of the typical Restoration Hardware, Crate and Barrel, Z Gallerie, etc.




Photos curtesy of Apartment Therapy, Home Grown Interiors, and Maison 21, and Cococozy.

Holiday Home Tours

Speaking of holiday decorating... After I posted about my own holiday decorating services yesterday, I decided to do a little research and see what other holiday decorating cheer is going on in Orange County. Here is some info that I found on holiday home tours going on in our area:

The Lido Isle Women's Charitable Foundation is putting on their 6th annual "Home for the Holidays", touring 3 beautiful Lido Island homes dressed up to the nines with holiday goodness. The Tour is this Thursday, December 3 from 11:00-3:00. Read more information and how to get tickets here.

The Newport Shores Holiday Home Tour is this Sunday, December 6 from 2:00-5:00pm. This is an annual event and this year the proceeds will provide gifts for the military troops who are stationed in Iraq. Find more information here.

The Balboa Island Walking Holiday Home Tour is Sunday December 13 from 11:00-4:00 pm. More information available here.

And in case anyone is lucky enough to be heading off to the Big Apple in the next week or two, you can tour The Holiday Showhouse on the upper east side with some big name decorators like Charlotte Moss, James Rixner, and Eric Cohler. The showhouse is open until December 14 in NYC. Read more information on Charlotte's website here.

*The photo at the top is from Charlotte Moss's spread in the Nov-Dec issue of Veranda. Amazing as always.